Before Kathleen McCann Gregor undertook a cycle of in vitro fertilization, she considered the tiny embryos produced outside her body and grown in a petri dish to be little balls of cells, not people.

She no longer sees them that way.

“Those were our babies,” said Gregor, the mother of 7-month-old twin girls. “They are our babies.”

In vitro fertilization, the mixing of eggs and sperm in a small glass dish, produces embryos, ready after three to five days for implantation into a woman’s uterus.

The procedure — conducted more than 130,000 times each year at nearly 500 clinics in the U.S. — results in more than 50,000 children annually.

IVF routinely creates extra embryos that will never be implanted. Whether surplus embryos should be created — and what should happen to them once they exist — is the seed of controversy in discussions of IVF and embryonic-stem-cell research.

Surplus frozen embryos are sometimes donated to adoptive parents or abandoned in infertility clinics. In some cases, more likely now that President Barack Obama has restored federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, the embryos are donated to labs looking for treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and paralysis.

“We haven’t yet answered the question of the moral status of the embryo,” said Deb Bennett-Woods, director of the Center for Ethics and Leadership in the Health Professions at Regis University. “Is it a collection of living cells with human DNA or is it a person?”

Health care professionals can’t be the whole conscience for all of science, technology and society, Bennett-Woods said.

“We must recognize that it is God’s business as to precisely when He ensouls embryos,” writes Catholic neuroscientist and priest Tadeusz Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. “The fundamental truth (is) that human embryos are inviolable and deserving of unconditional respect at every stage of their existence.”

Dr. William D. Schlaff, head of advanced reproductive medicine at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, said responsible professionals, patient groups and ethicists have been looking closely at the ethics of this work since the first “test-tube baby,” Louise Joy Brown, was born in England in 1978.

“These really thorny topics are considered and discussed all the time,” Schlaff said. “The pace of technology can outstrip the ability to understand ethical issues and even think through the practical implications.”

Split over in vitro

There is wide support among Christian, Islamic and Jewish communities for IVF, although it is not unanimous, Bennett-Woods said. The evangelical Christian community is divided on the issue. The Catholic Church has been consistently and strongly opposed to conception taking place outside the body.

“I don’t discount that the couple that wants a child is doing IVF out of love, but solving infertility must be done with ethical means,” said ethicist Stephen Napier with the National Catholic Bioethics Center. “Having children is a gift, not a right. For some, the only option is adoption.”

Dr. William Schoolcraft with the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine said decisions about embryos are weighed and made very carefully by patients in consultation with their doctors.

“We don’t believe in discarding embryos, and 90 percent of our patients are very much on the same page with us. But the embryos are theirs,” Schoolcraft said. “We can’t direct them to transfer, donate or destroy them.”

Question of conscience

For Gregor, a Catholic, the decision to use IVF to have her own genetically related children after suffering four miscarriages in one year felt comfortable to her despite the disapproval of Catholic orthodoxy.

“I knew in my own conscience it was right,” Gregor said. “Having gone through the process, there is no way I could think of an embryo as anything but my baby.”

If a couple is committed to having genetically related progeny, Earll said, she cautions the couple not to create more embryos than can be safely implanted in one cycle.

“Be aware of not creating embryos that you are going to have to freeze, or perhaps ultimately destroy,” Earll said.

After implantation, if too many fetuses develop, she said, selective reduction is not different from abortion.

“There are very ethical physicians out there trying to help patients who have had five miscarriages,” said Dr. Mark Bush, an associate at Conceptions Reproductive Associates of Colorado, an infertility clinic in Littleton and Lafayette. “I would hate to have this overly regulated without a very measured discussion.”

Schlaff said no law can effectively regulate every clinical situation without some patient getting hurt.

“We live in a pluralistic society,” Schlaff said. “We have to respect the autonomy of each American to make this decision for themselves.”